I've been busy posting back and forth trying to figure out what I can afford to contribute to BYOND anymore. I settled on the creation of BYOND Volunteers. Its scope is supposed to be larger than featured games, but that's what I'm personally going to be using it for.

I'd like to get Decadence featured soon. If you see me online, go ahead and make sure I'm getting to it... Though my team members will likely die due to my level of suck.

Apologies to anyone left out this week. I suffered a mix of software problems and, most likely, user errors so this column is a bit short. I'll keep the links bookmarked.

Honestly, having a server problem with an influx of players just makes it seem like a legitimate MORPG to me. ;)

Speaking of retro RPGs, IainPeregrine's single-player offering, Regressia, is now free! Those who already purchased the game will continue to receive benefits in other projects. Meanwhile, IainPeregrine will be taking some time off to write and looking for artists to help complete the sequel to his fighting game Jeet Kune Do.

Nadrew has again updated Skysaw's BYOND classic My Life as a Spy. Among the changes are new medals, a new stat, a new task mission and a new gadget. The keyword is "new" and Nadrew wants players to keep an eye out for more. Try the game for free. If you want more features, the Gold membership is now accessible from the main hub entry.

Another BYOND classic is getting a sequel. Falacy has released a playable alpha for GG: Tales of a King. Naturally, the GG stands for the treasure defense game Gold Guardians. Pictures were displayed ages ago. I wondered what happened! =)

Could this be the final update for the economic/military sim Wargames? Probably not, but apparently the code has got to a point where it's easier to restart from scratch. Acebloke plans to do just that and will post a screenshot soon. The next version will have changes for alliances, attacking, declarations of war, spying and more. Suggestions are welcome.

I don't know how player attention would be divided, but my suggestion is to keep the old version around and make a new hub entry.

For something all new, check out Sliced Death's The Castle! I don't know whether to call it a hybrid of tower defense and its RTS parent or just a slice of the latter. Players are tasked with guarding the titular castle and towers with their army of minions. A video has been posted, but Sliced Death is looking for help with a trailer.

The Magic Man is trying to finish a delayed project called W-BAT. Players will face off in turn-based battles with teams of characters customized with weapons. And there are a lot of weapons. It looks nifty. The Magic Man will be hosting a server for the next couple of days so check it out and remember to give him your feedback.

Mechanos7 has been busy releasing threedifferentgames. Snake is a BYOND implementation of a classic. Defend is a wave-based shooter with upgrade periods. Floramancer is a puzzle where players try to escape a dungeon using plant-based spells. The latter seems nifty, but a wee bit... Well, wee. For my old eyes anyway.

Yut Put has released an alpha demo of Sirius. It's a horror shooter with a science fiction slant. I didn't play very much and I could have used a help file, but the atmosphere seemed scary enough. I shot at an enemy that wasn't there. That counts for something, right? ;)

Bounce your bullets! Oasiscircle's new Toy Tanks project looks like it grabbed a mode from a classic Atari game, upgraded the graphics a generation or two and then added team-based multiplayer. Multiplevideosdisplay the progress. Subscribe to the BethlehemBrothersLPs channel on YouTube for more updates.

Beyond BYOND

NEStalgia lies! There's no world out there. There's just web applications that eat your column right before it's due. *Grumble grumble mumble mumble*

There is a time-sensitive link to the 7DRL Challenge that starts March 5th and a helpful column from John Harris on the rules of Roguelike design... But that's a procedurally generated fantasy!

I generally hate story-based games and their development process. However, there was a time when I played practically nothing but adventure games and loved Jane Jensen to death. I might as well use a video with her in it to mention Game Theory with Scott Steinburg.

I can't help but laugh at the fact you can't find anyone to play Decadence with. While it's true there was an initial burst of new players during the site redesign, shortly after the player counts dropped back down to normal levels.

im thinking about buying byond subscripton but is it really worth it??

You actually get web space for file storage, and what a lot of people don't realize, is that the $18 a year is a LOT cheaper than you would normally pay for webspace (usually $6+ per month). While you can't run things like PHP from it, you can easily run Javascript and make neat things with it).

Plus you get a blog, discounts on game subscriptions, and an avatar for the forum.

I made this to help show someone how to better manage things in their game than to just spit things out into the browser, but it's a perfect example of what you can use your storage space for.